Shoemaker Green Rain Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The rain garden at Shoemaker Green contains highly absorptive engineered planting soils where floodplain species like bald cypress and sweetbay magnolia flourish. Stormwater filters through a system of trench drains and inlets before it enters the rain garden, where it is further filtered through a series of stone and vegetative swales.

Geology Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The Geology Garden features rock types spanning 500 million years, from the Paleozoic through the Pleistocene eras. Each stone represents important transitions in the span of geologic time, while the plants growing here symbolize the evolutionary emergence of plant species.

Warden Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The Warden Garden, the elevated courtyard along South Street, is an Italianate garden located at the Kamin Entrance of the Penn Museum. The garden features mosaics by the Tiffany Glass Company and a long rectilinear fountain filled with colorful koi fish, water lilies, and other aquatic plants.

Stoner Courtyard (Gardens & Parks)

The Stoner Courtyard, the lower courtyard along South Street, is a stately enclosed outdoor room at the Penn Museum, featuring plants from all over the world. The diversity displayed and exhibited on the inside of the building is reinterpreted within the courtyard, providing an eclectic living exhibit of culturally significant flora.

Shakespeare Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The plantings in this garden, located adjacent to the Fisher Fine Arts Library, interpret the works of Shakespeare while reflecting the architectural and scholastic history of the University.

Peace Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The heart of this garden, located in a shaded enclave of the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, is the iconic silver Peace Symbol sculpture, designed by Robert Engman in 1969. Students have historically used this space as a site of protest, such as during the Vietnam War and the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Memorial Garden (Gardens & Parks)

The Memorial Garden, just west of the Peace Garden, contains all white blooming flowers and was established by Penn alumni to honor fellow students and loved ones who have passed away, including alumni lost during the September 11th attacks. The blooms grow in intimate, shady enclaves along the Class of 1959 Walk, where memorial benches are arranged on a pattern of staggered flagstones.

Dogwood Garden (Gardens & Parks)

This garden, east of Steinberg Hall/Dietrich Hall, features a variety of dogwood trees and shrubs edging a small lawn and sitting area with garden benches. Dogwoods bloom from March to April with a diversity of flower colors and shapes.

Lenape Garden (Gardens & Parks)

This garden, located at Penn’s Greenfield Intercultural Center, presents a unique chance to reflect on the close kinship between Penn’s original inhabitants, the native plants and people of the Delaware Valley.

Class of 1942 Garden (Gardens & Parks)

Students and faculty use the Class of 1942 Garden as an outdoor stage for seminars, poetry readings, performances, classes, and casual events. The garden features a variety of colorful flowers and trees in a quiet, intimate setting behind the Kelly Writer's House.

Pollinator Garden and Food Forest (Gardens & Parks)

This garden features a food forest with paw paws, quinces, figs, hardy kiwis, and persimmons, as well as pollinator plants attracting bees, butterflies, and wildlife. Its location in an urban corner of campus demonstrates the power of plants to create pockets of habitat even in developed sections of the city.